Monday, July 15, 2013

Just Laughing

- They read like interviews, your last few stories. Do you tell people you are going to write down what they say?
- Sometimes, afterwords.
- They don't care?
- No. Should they?
- They might think you're making fun of them.
- And it will hurt their careers. They don't think so. Do you know why?
- Why?
- We've been making fun of people for about 2,500 years.
- Who are "we"?
- People with some connection to the ancient Athenians. For three days, one day after another, they put on a set of three tragedies, followed by a satyr play, a losely related mockery of them. The three days of theater were followed by a fourth day given over to comedies, 5 of them. Each day's tragedies ended with laughter, the three successive days of tragedy, each ending with laughter, concluding in a day of laughter.
- If we still have any connection with the ancient Athenians we should be laughing after watching tragedy? Where are the tragedies?
- Yes, Where? When we laugh at our politicians we feel superior to them. And being laughed at, they feel superior to us.
- Why?
- Because nothing happens as a result of laughter. Laughter distances. Laughing at politicians proves to the politicians their power over us. Politicians know everything they do is a matter of getting the better of others, that there is a laughable lack of logic or consistency to what they say they are doing. They're proud of it. Throughout their inconsistency they in fact are holding to the course of getting the better of others, making profit from them. To have what they do exposed does not affect their pride. Or even their ability to go on doing anything for profit.
- Why not?
- Because our laughter has no relation to tragedy. Laughter should give us distance from the unbearable happenings of tragedy, allow us to hold onto what otherwise we'd deliberately suppress, calmly consider what to do about what we've seen.
- If we showed how our the actions of our business and political leaders - I suppose it's the same for both - if we showed how their actions are directly leading to death and destruction and then we laughed at them, they might not like it?
- Tragedy creates a community out of the audience, each separately identifying with what happens to the characters. Effectiveness of democratic check on attempts to direct the government to private interest depends on community of interest, on everyone having the same interest and everyone knowing they all have the same interest.
- So in the theater they felt the same things and could see they all felt the same. To be able to do something about it, we should see the greed and profiteering of our leaders leading to death and destruction. Laughing at it later we could recover from our pity at what's happened to others and fear of it happening to ourselves. We're not doing that now.
- We're just laughing.